Struck Read Online Free PDF Page B

at one of those optical illusions where a 3D image pops out of a pattern. The image that popped out at me now was of a girl named Rachel Jackson who sat a few seats in front of me in biology, only the Rachel Jackson I remembered had blue streaks in her goth-black hair, and a tattoo of a Celtic cross on the back of her neck. And now she was a white-is-the-new-black Follower? Maybe the world was coming to an end.
    I wondered how long she’d been standing behind me. Had she seen the lightning scars on my hands? No, they were still covered in lather. I didn’t rinse, just shut off the water and slid my soapy hands into my gloves, grimacing at the squish.
    “Excuse me. May I ask you a question?” Rachel said this like it was the first time.
    “You know, there are about ten other sinks you could use.” Gloves securely in place, I turned from the sink. Our noses were two inches from an Eskimo kiss.
    “My name is Sister Rachel,” she began.
    One of my eyebrows went way up. “Yeah, I know who you are,” I said. “Biology, remember? We have it together.” Apparently I was invisible. But that was fine with me. After the way I’d left things in Lake Havasu City, I was perfectly happy to live out the rest of my high school career in anonymity.
    Rachel blinked once, slowly. “Is it Maya?”
    “Mia.”
    She smiled. The Rachel Jackson I’d known never smiled.
    “Well, Mia …” I guessed the next words out of hermouth before she spoke them. “I was wondering, have you embraced the Word of Rance Ridley Prophet as the Word of God?”
    “No,” I said, “and I’m not—” She went on as if I hadn’t spoken.
    “Then I’d like to invite you to attend a midnight revival at the Church of Light this evening held by Rance Ridley Prophet himself.” She conveyed the scripted words in a single breath.
    Before the quake, there had been maybe three students who wore the white of the Followers. Back then, most sane people still considered the Church of Light to be one more group of extremist evangelical whackos. Then Rance Ridley Prophet accurately predicted a few natural disasters and world crises on The Hour of Light , and people across the globe started taking him and his church seriously. When he predicted the Puente Hills Quake, right down to the minute, people in Los Angeles started taking him seriously. Too seriously.
    I didn’t get it. So Prophet had predicted the earthquake before it hit. California was earthquake country! Everyone knew we were overdue for “The Big One.” Prophet probably had a pet scientist locked up in the basement, calculating earthquake probability and feeding him information. The idea that God told Prophet the exact dates and times cataclysmic events were to happen was not on my list of logical explanations.
    Aside from that, I had a special dislike for any organization, religious or otherwise, that pointed their finger at this person or that person and condemned them as evil, maybe because I’d had that finger of condemnation pointed at mein the past. A lot of people back in Lake Havasu City knew about my human lightning rod weirdness and avoided me, but some went out of their way to let me know being struck by lightning was a punishment from God, and that I must have done something terrible to deserve His wrath. My own grandmother had been one of those people.
    My skin itched from the soap drying inside my gloves.
    Rachel was still waiting for my response.
    “You know … thanks for the offer,” I told her, “but revivals … they’re not my thing.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Pretty sure. Very sure. One hundred percent, actually.”
    “Sister Mia—”
    “Just Mia is great.”
    “We’re all brothers and sisters in the eyes of the Lord,” Rachel said.
    “Uh-huh.” I preferred a less incestuous worldview, but I kept that thought to myself.
    Rachel cocked her head and studied me. “Mia, can I tell you what I see when I look at you?” She didn’t wait for my answer. “A girl with